Between Unsure & A Hundred
by Satellites on Parade
Summary: Joe flees Lillian without a good-bye on his seventeenth birthday, and, nearly three years later, must decide if he has the courage to go back. Unsurprisingly, one of the things that made him leave may be what brings him home again. Joe/Alice.
1. You Are a Tourist

**Well, howdy, guys! Haha. Sick of me yet? **

**So, this kind of came about like a bolt from the blue, if you'll pardon the cliché. I was listening to some Death Cab for Cutie (all in a day's work) and heard "You Are a Tourist," and then I started looking at **_**other**_** songs about leaving town and leaving people behind and regrets and everything, so I made a fanmix, and then it became about Joe and Alice, and about Joe leaving Lillian because he felt like he didn't belong there anymore, like a tourist. **

**There will be multiple chapters in this story, all aligning with one track from the fanmix. This one accompanies "You Are a Tourist." There will be ten more chapters, eleven in total. To give you some hints at what's going to go down as the story progresses, here's the track listing:**

**You Are a Tourist – Death Cab for Cutie**

**City with No Children – Radiohead**

**Vienna – the Fray**

**Winter Song – Ingrid Michaelson & Sara Bareilles**

**Gone Away – Lucy Schwartz**

**World Spins Madly On – the Weepies**

**Copperline – James Taylor**

**Quiet – This Will Destroy You**

**Hundred – the Fray**

**Ghost Story – Sting**

**Gotta Have You – the Weepies**

**Woo, okay, I'll shut up now and let you read. I hope this meets with everyone's approval. :D**

**DISCLAIMER: ****I claim no ownership to the characters used in this work of fanfiction, nor do I claim to have any association with the film from which they derive. **

–

Joe liked to think that he loved Alice.

He liked to think that Lillian was the sort of town you could never really leave behind, because it was home and you were a part of it. He liked to think that Charles would be making cheesy zombie movies for the rest of his life. He liked to think that no matter what happened or how far life seemed to progress, things would stay the same, that regardless of the imminent onslaught of growing up, everything would go back to normal, as it had been before That Summer. Things had gone back to normal after his mother died, so this – That Summer, and its ripped-up remnants – would be no different.

There were a great many things Joe _liked_ to think, the same way his father _liked_ to think that there was a Heaven from which Joe's mother was watching over them – the same way that Charles, at age thirteen, had _liked_ to think that he was a prodigy – the same way Preston _liked_ to think that there was no unbridged gap between him and his friends even though he had stayed safely behind in the evacuation center – the same way that Alice had once _liked_ to think that maybe, just maybe, her mother would come home, and she wouldn't have to hide her black eyes behind sunglasses anymore.

In the days and months and years following That Summer, however, Joe had to work harder and harder to pretend that nothing had permanently changed. It was something invisible, passive, lingering – but it was there, directly below his feet or circling around his head. He supposed that the signs were there: Charles suddenly wanted to make only serious, gut-gripping movies exploring the psychology of loss and isolation and introspection; Martin never stopped shooting baleful glances at the long white scar raking up his calf; Preston grew bitter and resentful and would sometimes not hang out with them; Cary bought and made more firecrackers than he knew what to do with, never assured that he had enough to illuminate whatever sinkhole would suddenly come yawning up under him; and Alice…

He didn't know about Alice. In his later years, he would realize that she hadn't changed at all. He had.

He had almost gone up to her door to say good-bye the day he drove out of Lillian for good, or what he thought was for good. He had sat in the car for two hours across the street from her house, his breath clouding up in front of him and dissipating out amongst the fog. He had been wrestling with himself, debating and almost-ing until he finally turned the key in the ignition and departed. He _liked_ to think that he hadn't looked back, but the truth was, he spent so much time gazing at the rear view mirror that he narrowly avoided an accident several times.

If asked, he could not completely explain why he left Lillian that day after his seventeenth birthday. He could not explain how he had deceived all of the grinning, boisterous faces at the party by pretending to be happy and permanent and content. He could not explain why, after he had blown out the candles, his wish had been that his father would not catch him when he sneaked out of the house the following morning with suitcases in hand, and that a parting letter on the kitchen table would be enough.

He hadn't run away, he kept telling himself. Running away was for cowards, and he was not a coward. He had always believed that there was a difference between feeling fear and acting on fear. He had felt horribly, horribly afraid when That Thing had taken him up in one taut hand, but he had crammed that fear far down into the pit of his belly and acted brave.

As he passed the wind-worn sign that said, "You are now leaving _**Lillian**_; come visit again!," he felt no fear at all.

He supposed that what made him leave was the fact that, after That Summer, Lillian became unimportant, precisely what it was on that exiting sign: a place he was just visiting, but that he had to leave eventually, maybe with a souvenir and a postcard in his pocket.

(_Souvenir_, he remembered from his French class, _is the verb that means "to remember." _He wondered if souvenirs were actually bits of his memory that he had chosen to empty, to store in the confines of a cheap little box or magnet.)

The souvenirs he had left with were Alice's dull, unpolished locket that she had given him after That Thing had taken his; and a small reel of film labeled "The Case: Outtakes" in Charles' cramped, shaky cursive. As for the postcard, he had it filled out and addressed and stamped for when he would be ready to send it. It grew yellowed and too-folded and faded over the months until the words were mere flickering imprints of a lonely apology. After a while, he forgot what he had written. He imagined it had been heartfelt and poetic and would make up for every mistake he had ever made. It grew from a message consigned to oblivion to an indubitable excuse: "Well, I wrote to you." No matter what he had done, there was the omnipresent reassurance that he had written, that he had thought of the name on the address line every night before he managed to fall asleep. All was forgiven.

He was a tourist to the place he had once called his hometown, and a stranger to its inhabitants, or perhaps they were strangers to him. He would look at old family photographs and on-set pictures of _The Case_ and wonder who the meek-looking boy with the brown hair was, because it certainly wasn't anybody he knew, not anymore.

He had turned the wheel resolutely and there was the freeway, lolling out in front of him and disappearing into the gradually thinning morning fog. He had driven past the wrecked train station and the all-too picturesque train tracks. He knew he would never be able to see it the same way again, no matter how hard everybody tried to rebuild it to its original humility. It didn't look bad, really; it looked far too good.

As he had found himself driving alone in the pit of the traveling night, he left the radio on, mostly paying it no mind. At 1:13 AM, "Africa" blasted its way out over his speakers, and he thought of Alice, just as he would think of Alice many more times in the future when prompted by seemingly inane things. He and she used to always sing loudly and freely along to it, no matter how flat they sounded (he was a terrible singer), and sometimes they'd dance.

_It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you. There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do_.

Yes.

Sometimes they'd dance.

He had imagined, vaguely, the shimmer of her shoulders, the fanning out of her hair, the rattled pinkness of her throat as she waited for him to come closer to her. Somewhere between Ohio and New York, he stopped thinking of Alice Dainard, and, to his shame, he even began to forget what she smelled like.

–

Charles had managed to get his hands on _two_ English muffins despite his younger twin siblings' best efforts to keep him from doing so. As he threw open his front door that morning and stumbled outside into the fog, pulling his jacket on with one hand and holding pages and pages of a new script in the other, he was clenching one of the aforementioned English muffins between his teeth. When he shouted, "Bye, Mom!" behind him, it sounded altogether more similar to "Mmmyy, mmumf!"

"Say hi to Joe, Charles!" his mother had called out the kitchen window, and he'd thrown a dismissive hand up to show he'd heard her.

The front door to Joe's house was always unlocked during the day, no matter the season. He pulled it open and plowed right in, swallowing the last chunk of his butter-covered breakfast delight.

"Joe!" he bellowed as he flitted around the kitchen, taking a swig out of a Coca-Cola bottle and wiping his mouth with a few paper towels before tossing them on the floor. "You are going to totally go through the roof when you see this new scene; it's mint! I decided that I wanted Lieutenant Griffiths and Sophie to have like, one parting scene before he goes off to fight in 'Nam. Kind of like Detective Hathaway and his wife talking when the train goes by, except he'd have to leave her! Wouldn't that be totally sad? It'll be so great!"

As he'd been excitedly talking, he'd made his way down the hall and barged into Joe's room, babbling the tail end of it to an unkempt bed before realizing that there was no one there. He frowned, straightened, and looked around.

"Joe?" he yelled, exiting the room and checking the bathroom, the office, and the living room. Lucy thumped her tail at him from her bed in the office but didn't get up to say hello. He grumbled expletives under his breath as he paced around the house more, searching for clues to his make-up artist and idea-bouncer-offer's inconsiderate disappearance.

"Come on, man, where _are_ you?" he shouted, and just as the question had finished leaving his lips, he noticed a folded piece of white paper on the table out of the corner of his eye. He breathed a sigh of relief and strode into the family room to get it, wondering why on earth he hadn't imagined that Joe had left him a note explaining his whereabouts to start with.

"Very funny, you flake," he grunted to the letter as he unfolded it, setting down his script on the edge of the banged-up table.

His eyes scanned the words methodically, then suddenly scattered.

He dropped the note.

"Holy shit," he whispered. "Holy shit, holy shit, holy _shit_." And then, forgetting his script and his movie for the first time in years, he vaulted out of the front doorway, climbed into his parents' car across the street, and sped to the police station, making it there in three minutes. He was met with many appraising stares when he entered the station, even forgetting to be flustered when an angry-looking teenager with a mohawk made a rude gesture at him.

"Mr. Lamb!" he croaked when he finally collapsed on the desk of the rather astonished-looking deputy. "Oh my God, Mr. Lamb; you won't believe—"

"Slow down there, Chuck," Deputy Lamb hushed him calmly, eyebrows knit together as they always were, wary and half-concerned. "What's the problem?"

"It's Joe," Charles managed to wheeze, and Deputy Lamb leapt out of his seat. "He's. Holy shit. He's gone."

–

Joe wondered what guilt felt like.

If it felt like there was always a hand seizing his heart, twisting and wringing it viciously like one would to a dry towel, and if it felt like he was always on the brink of shedding tears but continuously forced himself to keep his balance, and if it felt like he wanted to reach inside of himself and scratch and claw until the feeling went away, then there was one thing he knew for sure: this, these things he was feeling, they were guilt.

It had been the right thing to do, leaving Lillian. He told himself that every day. A dirtied Post-It hung off the edge of his bedside table so that every morning he could wake up and read, "You did the right thing."

You did the right thing.


	2. City With No Children

**I hope you'll all pardon the fact that this chapter's a bit angsty. My father passed away on Wednesday after a short fight with cancer. It isn't exactly something that I was ready to do at eighteen, but such is life, I suppose. **

**Writing this is a welcome distraction for me, and hopefully it's enjoyable for all of you. Many thanks to my lovely reviewers, DazzleDust22, I love the Pyro (I love him, too, haha), Super8-Lover (good thing to love!), tryingtobemagnanimous, avita22, siriusly cool48, axela of azarath, LittleMissFirebug22, and Jonuda. I hope you all enjoy this chapter as much as you seemed to enjoy the last!**

**This chapter accompanies "City With No Children" by Radiohead.**

**DISCLAIMER: ****This story may have been written by me, but none of the characters wherein belong to me in any manner. This is a fanwork and was written for fun and I receive no profit from it. **

–

Alice is nineteen today.

She is currently driving along the back road to get downtown, not caring that it takes longer because she wants to try to absorb the scenery, even though she hasn't been able to really absorb _anything_ for a couple of years. The dented yellow car roars and splutters, sending cascades of blue jays and robins scattering up into the sunlight through the alder and cedar boughs. "Don't You (Forget About Me)" is playing on the radio, and, after making a disdainful face, she switches stations to greet an overplayed Tears for Fears tune. She scoffs and resigns to turning the radio off, and curses Joe Lamb (as she often does) for forcing her memories of him into every song. She can barely even listen to music anymore.

The boys called her the night before to tell her that they were planning something special for her at the diner. A surprise, maybe a little party with presents. She hadn't entirely wanted to go, mostly because – _damn_ that Joe Lamb kid – the place reminds her of someone, someone with doleful eyes and a sparse smile, but Charles' pleading and Cary's threats to blow up her house if she didn't cooperate had convinced her otherwise.

She drives over the bridge that looms above the river that is now high and swollen with the onslaught of autumn. The pines stand tall and green against the reds and oranges of the changing trees. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a gray fox scurrying through the underbrush.

She sighs – the fog shifts, blotting out the sun – and turns the radio back on.

–

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"

"Do you want me to light you some candles? I just bought this great new blowtorch—"

"Shut _up_, Cary! God! You're the last thing she needs!"

"Statistically speaking, the chances of blowing out all candles in one breath are—"

"You shut up, too!"

"Happy birthday, Alice," Martin said, speaking the most ordinary words in the most ordinary tone that Alice had heard all day. He smiled warmly at her, the way one smiles at a friend who has lost someone, and patted her shoulder. She smiled back, a rare gesture as of late.

"We have presents for you," Charles said excitedly, starting to reach under his chair and throw up gift after shoddily wrapped gift as though digging for treasure. "You might want to get Cary's checked by a bomb squad first, though…"

"Stuff it, you big tub of lard!" Cary snapped at Charles before turning to Alice with a sincere grin, teeth enormous as ever and free of braces. "I promise it's not anything dangerous."

Alice could almost close her eyes and remember the day that Cary had kissed her, out of nowhere, when they were both reaching their eighteenth birthdays. He had been embarrassed and fumbling and his retainer had pressed awkwardly into her lips, and he had shifted on his feet, staring at the ground, before blurting out, "God, I'm sorry, Alice! I've kind of liked you for a while and I just – you don't have to even talk about this or do anything about it; we can just forget it ever happened, okay? God. I'm sorry." And she had said, in a voice hushed with astonishment, "It's fine," and Joe had been gone for a year.

A sharp elbow to her ribs from a scuffle that had emerged between Cary and Martin woke her from her reminiscing. It had been Martin's bony joint that had jabbed into her, and he looked at her apologetically, glasses gone, replaced by cumbersome-looking contacts. Cary grunted and shoved at him from across the table, and Alice jokingly shoved him back. He looked astounded, almost offended, but then softened and started chattering with Preston.

Alice looked around her at the table – at _their_ table, where they would all get ice cream or fries or even coffee as the years passed. On either side of her were Martin on her left, Preston on her right. Cary was across from her, and Charles beside him. The seat between the two of them was empty, piled high with presents to disguise the absence of an occupant.

A small, rather deflating cake was in front of her, the product of one of Preston's misguided attempts at baking. The pink frosting that framed it was starting to harden in a rather unpleasant-looking way. She grimaced, but inside her chest everything felt warm, grateful. The boys had never had to do these things for her. Hell, they hadn't even had to keep talking to her after Joe left. She had always thought that the only reason they spent time with her was because they wanted to spend time with Joe, and she was just part of the package to them. But the day Joe left – the day she had laid on her back on the hardwood floor of her bedroom, eyes fixated on the ceiling, and shed a single tear when night fell and no one knocked on her window – it had been Charles who had come by to see how she was doing, to talk for a while. It had been Cary, the next morning, who had been standing on her front porch with a stupid grin on his face, asking her if she wanted to go shoot off some fireworks that night. It had been Preston who had come with the hopes of comforting her but who had inadvertently started stating the statistical unlikelihood that most runaways ever returned home. And, finally, it had been Martin who had invited her over for dinner because all the guys were spending the night at his house, and though she had politely declined, that same warmth had been opening in her chest.

And now here they were, all beaming expectantly at her as Cary used a match to light the one thick pink candle in the center of the cake. In spite of herself, she felt her cheeks swell up with happiness, and she leaned forward and blew. The candle didn't even flicker before it went out with a sound like a door shutting, and then there was only a stream of smoke reaching up to the ceiling and the skies, dissipating like a dream she could never hope to remember.

The boys all cheered, and she got claps on the back from both Martin and Preston, and before she knew it, Charles was shoving presents at her, shoving apologies and comforts and hopes of filling the void, but as she opened more and more of them, the emptiness in the chair became more apparent, and the void could only grow wider and more endless.

_Everything is finite_, Alice always told herself. _And this, too, shall pass._

–

She sometimes thought that she, Joe, Cary, Charles, Martin, and Preston were the last good thing to happen to Lillian; the last beacon of innocence and childhood that was not predestined to fade. When they would to stroll along the sidewalks downtown, shouting and joking and splitting sodas, she would look around them and feel as though a chunk had been torn from their town that would never return. They were the last true children to walk the streets, and, though everyone wanted to insist that the alien had taken nothing of great value (_except a necklace_), the truth was that there were no real kids anymore, no younger generation left untouched by the cataclysmic summer of 1979. This absence of purity would recover one day, perhaps when Alice had children of her own, but for now, it gnawed and tore at her until she couldn't think about it anymore.

She decided to take the short way home. She passed by the Lamb house and did not blink.

–

At the Kaznyck house, Charles glances at his movie poster for _Halloween_ and recalls the time he convinced Joe to sneak into the movie theatre to see it. He shakes his head and goes to brush his teeth.

Cary's mother has been harping on him to clean up under his bed all day, so he does. In a far corner against the wall is a dirty, ripped-up gray backpack whose contents were all emptied at once, in some distant, hungering pit.

Martin finds an old copy of his script from _The Case_, with various notes written on it in two different sets of handwriting. Scribbled next to the line _DET. HATHAWAY: I love you, too_ is a sentence written in messy print that says, _Look her in the eye and feel it_ and, underneath that, in a much larger, even sloppier scrawl, _**Damn it, Joe; I'm the director here! Ignore that, Martin. What you need to do is look her in the eye… and feel it.**_

Preston has an old card from his fourteenth birthday on his bedside table with a funny caricature of himself, Joe, Charles, Cary, and Martin on the cover. Inside, it says, _Happy birthday, Preston! I hope it's really nice and that Cary's present doesn't hurt you. Your friend, Joe_.

They all find themselves glancing at their calendars. It is August 20th. In two weeks, they will all be starting their second years of college. In one week, Joe will have been gone for two years.

–

It was around six o'clock when Alice pulled up across the street from her house. She hadn't even realized that she'd been at the diner and subsequently wandering the town with the boys nearly all day until she noticed the sun starting to move toward the west and heard the clock on Main Street chime that it was five-thirty. She'd said hurried good-byes and thank yous and had crammed all of her presents into the trunk of the car – a camera from Charles, one for taking pictures, a hobby she had adopted in recent years; a huge bundle of homemade sparklers from Cary; a stack of movies and books by Carl Sagan from Martin; a large book containing statistics about how to survive bizarre and amusing accidents such as attack by angry raccoon from Preston. She had wondered, vaguely, what Joe would have given her. The thought had only lasted for a fleeting glimpse of a moment before she shook it off, slammed the trunk shut, and climbed into the driver's seat, one hand out the window and waving good-bye.

She locked the doors to the old yellow bucket of bolts (as her father called it) and took the porch steps two at a time, jamming her key into the doorknob and swinging open the door in one swoop.

"I'm home, Dad," she started to say, walking into the living room, and then she froze.

Jackson Lamb sat on the couch opposite her father, who was reclining in his armchair. She mentally whacked herself with a baseball bat for not putting two and two together when she had seen the police car parked in front of the house.

"Hello, Mr. Lamb," she eked out automatically, straightening her posture.

"Hey there, Alice," Jackson greeted her back, eyes flicking up and over her, scrutinizing her like a piece of evidence. He seemed unimpressed by her attire, an old brown leather jacket that had once belonged to his son, a turtleneck, a plaid skirt, stockings, motorcycle boots, tortoiseshell Ray-Bans. She curled her lips in to hide the red she had smeared on them in the car. "Happy birthday there."

"Thank you," she responded politely, her voice even. Louis eyed her almost with surprise. She cleared her throat and shifted, tucking a straying fan of hair behind her ear.

She could see the unasked questions clamoring and pulsing behind Jack's brown eyes, eyes that mirrored so eerily the eyes of his son. She wanted more than anything to be able to answer them for him, to be able to cure his guilt and confusion with a statement that wasn't a lie, but not even lies could create themselves behind the veil she had thrown over herself. She and Jackson Lamb rarely spoke; rarely even more did they ever look each other in the eye since Joe had gone. She remembered him the night of her and Joe's senior prom, taking photograph after photograph and clapping Joe heartily on the back and giving her approving, understanding looks that spoke volumes. She had smiled back, pleasantly taken aback by the fact that the man could even _look_ something besides solemn, and Joe had kissed her right on the lips, smack in front of the Sheriff of Lillian, and she hadn't had to put blush on for the rest of the evening.

"Hope you're well," Jack said.

"I am, thank you. I hope you're…" Her voice trailed off, and she felt _ashamed_ for presuming that he would be even close to all right or well or whatever meaningless word flung onto a person.

She wanted to tell him that she understood, that she missed him, too. But instead she muttered, "Well, it was good to see you," and fled upstairs, ignoring the disappointed, apologetic mumblings of her father. She slammed the door shut to her bedroom, flattening herself against it with her palms on its surface, and, with her head aimed at the ceiling, cried.

She sank down until she was sitting and wrapped her arms around her knees and cried.

The sun dropped behind the hills eventually, and her room darkened, and her cheeks were wet and hot and she felt no remorse for her tears.

"I hate you," she whispered, and she didn't even know who she was saying it to anymore.


	3. Vienna

**Oh my God, this chapter is so rushed and boring and I **_**hate**_** it. But I had to get something up for all of you before I leave for my two-week vacation! I'll be gone until August 3rd visiting family and won't have any Internet, so you won't be seeing updates from me until I get back. Hopefully I'll write a couple of chapters while I'm there! **

**Haha, this is really tough to write sometimes because I just want Joe to get back to Lillian and return to Alice already! But alas, I have to build some stuff up. Despite this, however, I might be removing This Will Destroy You's "Quiet" from the lineup, because the scene I was planning on using with that is kind of fading in my mind in terms of importance/significance plot-wise, and I feel like it would just drag the story along even more than some of the stuff I'm writing now is!**

**All right; it's late and I need to get up early to catch my plane. I hope you all enjoy! **

–

The rain falls without reprieve outside Joe's window. The cars honk, the pigeons garble, the tramps shout and swear, the planes roar, the fire escape clangs with the downpour, the pipes wail, the subway rattles, the cats yowl, the German couple above him makes a wide array of suggestive noises in the night, the thunder rumbles, and the kettle whistles. The phone never rings, and it is very likely the only thing in his cramped, helter-skelter SoHo studio apartment that makes no noise at all.

He had never imagined that he would be living in SoHo, but he had previously underestimated the endearing powers of his face alone. The landlady thinks he's "just the nicest kid I've ever had around here," though many of the other tenants will say otherwise, their chief complaint being that he looks too unhappy and "fractures their auras," or some other artsy excuse. The young woman in her mid-twenties who lives across from him is studying fashion and always wrinkles her nose at his garments no matter how hard he tries to look presentable, and the self-professed drummer two doors down reminds him eerily of Donny, as does the smell that always wafts out from the crevices around his door.

Joe has the landlady to thank for the roof over his head, because he makes little money at his day job in an antique store in Tribeca. His boss there is a rather distracted old man with a penchant for falling asleep in some of the prized nineteenth-century armchairs at random intervals, and business is so slow that Joe is constantly marveling at the fact that the shop is still open for ten hours every Monday through Friday. He returns to his apartment (he doesn't dare call it "home") at 6:45 PM every weekday and proceeds to sketch and paint and occasionally sculpt, if he's feeling really lucky, though he rarely manages to eke out anything to tempt his satisfaction.

There is hardly enough room in his tiny one-room abode for anything excluding a few canvasses, a broken-down pottery wheel, a radio, a small television, a sagging brown couch from a flea market, a precarious stack of old novels (among them _The Great Gatsby_, _Watership Down_, _Sophie's Choice_, _East of Eden_, _The Naked and the Dead_, and _Ragtime_), a frayed Indian rug, piles of sketchbooks and portfolios, and, on the counter dividing the kitchen from the rest of the space, a medium-sized redwood keepsake box that had once been his mother's. Off in the left corner is the bathroom, barely four feet wide and with only a stand-up shower, toilet, chipped porcelain sink, and medicine cabinet. In a plastic cup is a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, a razor, and a comb; beside it is a can of shaving cream and a nail clipper. The medicine cabinet is empty save for mouthwash, Tylenol, and small packs of tissues, and one green towel is tossed across the toilet bowl haplessly.

The pipes run directly through his dwelling space, scaling up the right corner beside the kitchen and moving over the ceiling like ivy. The kitchen has a stove and a refrigerator the size of an unusually large shoebox. The stove is stout and black and its feet are growing rusty, but otherwise it's a mildly reliable piece of junk. Joe rarely uses it anyway, typically resigning to ordering Chinese take-out or getting a plate of spaghetti at the Italian _ristorante_ on the corner.

The apartment holds no remnants of Lillian, nothing to suggest that Joe is not, as he often says, "all right," but so consumed by loneliness that he can hardly open his eyes in the morning, knowing that if he does, he will remember that he is alone, and that he is not in his bedroom, and that there is not a plate of gray scrambled eggs and burned toast waiting for him in the kitchen with a quick note from his father. Yes, he has to keep reminding himself: he has a father. It is this, along with the loneliness and _Alice_, that he tries his hardest to forget, and that he never can.

Joe can never tell if he feels guilty. Every time it crosses his mind, it is interrupted by the furious pounding of the rain on his windowpane, and he goes to sleep.

–

Joe rides the subway into Tribeca every morning, his navy-blue peacoat and moth-eaten red scarf dulled by the wind. He never sits; one hand always hangs off the hooks running along the ceiling, his arm bent in the shape of an L. He disembarks and walks two blocks and the wind whips his hair up over his face; it rarely moves back but simply puffs up like a parachute or, as his boss will sometimes say, like an octopus. The trees in Central Park are dropping their leaves and the sidewalks are mottled with brown and red and orange and yellow, and Joe's hands are in his pockets, and he does not think of Alice.

A woman comes into the shop hoping to sell a polished gold locket that had belonged to her great-grandmother that is encrusted with minuscule glittering emeralds and pearls, and inside his a picture of a solemn-looking woman with pursed lips, and the chain is cool in Joe's hand, and he does not think of Alice.

His boss sometimes reminisces about his wife, about how they met in high school and never fell out of love, about how he kissed her forehead before she passed away, and Joe does _not_ think of Alice, not at all.

He thinks of the last day he saw his mother alive, of how she had made him hash browns and had dropped him off early at school because she had to take someone else's shift because that someone else was sick. He thinks of her letting go of his hand as he walked up the steps of the building, of waving good-bye to her as she blew him a kiss and called, "Be home in time for supper; I'm making hamburgers!" He thinks of Charles popping up beside him and he thinks of the fact that he didn't promise her he'd see her again, and he thinks of her locket, silver and glistening around her neck, and he thinks of Alice crying in his room while he watched old home movies – no. No. He does not think of Alice. He must never think of Alice.

–

The majority of the space in the garbage can in the kitchen is taken up by crumpled balls that may have been letters, rejected and torn and tossed. Joe dares not look at them, because he knows that if he does, he'll want to try again. He'll want to sit down on the couch with his legs crossed and flatten a piece of paper over a book in his lap with a sharpened pencil and try time and again to write something even moderately meaningful, and he'll keep trying and trying until he wrinkles it all up in his hands and assaults the wall with it.

_Dear Alice._

_Dear Alice._

_Alice…_

_Hi, Alice…_

_To Alice._

_To my Alice._

_God, Alice; I'm sorry._

_Dear Alice._

_Dear Alice._

_I don't know what to say, Alice. There's the truth, like you always wanted it._

_Dear Alice. Please call me. Please know my number even though I never told it to you._

_Dear Alice, is Dad okay? How's Charles? How's Cary? How's Preston? How's Martin? Is it snowing there yet? I miss you. I miss—_

He empties the wastebasket every day.

–

When the radio is playing loudly enough, Joe props up an enormous canvas the entire width of the longest wall in the apartment. He thrashes his hands in buckets of paint, gathering colours in his fingers, and throws blotches and sprays of Euro-gray and cobalt and evergreen and scarlet all across the canvas, not caring what it winds up looking like. He grits his teeth and wants to scream, and his arms grow sore from their writhing and floundering, and he sits down on the sea of newspaper he's spread out and sighs. The German couple upstairs makes love, and he does not think of Alice.

–

He likes to think that Alice doesn't matter to him. He supposes he almost must like to lie to himself.

He had never wanted to believe in love at first sight. He had never wanted to believe in miracles. He had never wanted to believe in soul mates, or aliens, or kisses that shook the skies, or happy endings, or monsters, or one true loves. Funny, he thinks sometimes, that he was forced to believe in all of these things the moment Alice Dainard pushed him out of her way in the second grade.

He doesn't allow himself the luxury of thinking that she might miss him. He knows he doesn't deserve her pining, and, if he knows Alice, he's certain that he won't get it. He wonders if Cary ever wound up telling her that he liked her, and he wonders if maybe she's dating Charles now. When the wind tosses cascades of leaves down over him in curtains, he wonders if she would find it to be beautiful.

He wonders if he will ever go back. He yearns to; he dreams of it, and each time the dream is different. Sometimes he dreams that he will go back and Alice will welcome him, and her hair will gather in his hands and she will press herself against his chest and her eyes will close and he will marry her. Other times he dreams that he knocks on her door and she never answers, or that she does answer, and her hand slashes across his face, and she does not speak a word to him. He dreams that he deserves it. He dreams that he is sorry. And yet, when he awakens in the morning, he must keep reminding himself: he does not think of Alice, just as Alice likely never thinks of him. He has no right to think of Alice anymore. Alice has forgotten him, he is certain, and he wonders if it was easy for her. It probably was. She probably did not blink or breathe or flinch.

October winds to a close. It is Halloween, and the rain is falling, and at 11:41 PM, Joe allows himself to admit that he is thinking of Alice, that Alice is in his every thought and breath and that he is ashamed. He sighs and puts his chow mein on the floor before getting to his feet, approaching the canvas, and throwing paint with his pitching arm, and with every release there is another gust of summer gone from his grasp, another freckle on Alice Dainard's face that he cannot bear to remember.

_This is the distance. This is my game face._


	4. Winter Song

**Since I love you guys so much and got so inspired, I decided to post one of the chapters I wrote the past week by hijacking my relatives' Internet at three in the morning as soon as I finished it. BE GRATEFUL. BE VERY, VERY GRATEFUL. No; I'm joking. You can ignore me.**

**I've had a super awesome vacation and I'm flying home tomorrow. My birthday was on Sunday so that was pretty sweet – I'm 19, woohooooo – so I get to go home to lots of presents and a party with all my dorky friends. Ah, summer. **

**I apologize in advance for any errors you may find in Joe's dad's dialogue. For some baffling reason TextEdit cannot handle gerunds with the "g" removed from the end and turns them into whatever spazzy word it sees fit. I've scrutinized the chapter to make sure all is well, but you never know! This program is sneaky and tricky and I'm delusional from tiredness, ahaha. GOOD NIGHT ALL.**

**And yeah, Charles' sister – not Jen, his other sister – is apparently named Benji. Thank you, IMDb. Just to clarify, she's the one who was all, "do we have anymore English muffins?" during the scene at the Kaznyk house after the train crash. You know. The dweeby one with the glasses.**

**This is a FAT chapter.  
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**DISCLAIMER: I think it's pretty obvious from my BLATANT DISREGARD TO CANON AND CRAZY RAMBLINGS that I don't own any characters used in this chapter. This is a writing exercise that will hopefully fulfill some purpose in the near future. Don't sue me. I'm poor.**

–

The first semester of the school year passes fleetingly and without a sound. It feels as though just as Alice has finished emptying her suitcases and making up her bed, she is cramming the luggage back into the trunk of the Camaro again, kicking piles of snow out from under the tires and waving good-bye to all of her friends, making sure she leaves the heater on and the blinds closed before she leaves. It seems meaningless, she sometimes thinks – college is hardly cheap, and her father works harder (and more soberly) than he ever has before to get her through it, but it has no substance for her, and she feels guilty. She has been studying Performing Arts for two years, and somehow it always manages to get easier. She knows it should worry her that she never has to make any effort to pretend, to lie, but it doesn't. Pretending has always been a part of her, just as smiling feels like it never has been.

When she pulls in to Lillian, it is snowing, and everything is a stark, burning white. The pines are dusted in ivory clumps, and all birds but the cardinals are silent. The sky above is a milky gray, and what few visible patches of street are glimmering with ice. The Camaro moves slowly as Alice takes it all in again, rolling down her window to breathe in the scent of nothingness, allowing herself a moment's sentimentality as she passes the swing set where someone with meek brown eyes had kissed her for the first time. To any outsider, the town would seem to be buckling under the weight of its pure, glittering desolation, but Alice cannot help but feel at peace, because she is home, even though it has seemed like as blank a slate as it is now since the twenty-seventh of August two years ago. The town has since felt as though it harbors no dread or regret, and she frequently berates herself for caring that it is missing someone – someone important – when no one else does. She has observed with watchful eyes the gradual growth of apathy in the wake of _Joe's_ departure (it is a name whispered if it is ever spoken at all), but it is days like these – days when the sunset turns the snow a ragged red and no footprints scatter across the surface – that she wonders if she is not the only one who is good at pretending.

She visits Charles first.

She remembers from his phone call the day of her final exam on Arthur Miller that he has already arrived home, and she is grateful for it. Martin had said he'd be crossing over into Lillian at around the same time she would; Cary has been living at home and attending the junior college but was two towns over with his grandparents; and Preston will be back from Stanford by the weekend.

She has to keep reminding herself that Joe is never coming back.

The twins are making such a ruckus from the house that she can hear it even as she steps out of the car near the sidewalk, her boots sinking deep into the snow with a delicate crunch. She shivers as the cold hits her and feels her nose grow pink and shiny, pulling the collar of her knitted poncho higher around her chin and tugging the thick wool beret her aunt had given her down over her numb ears. Charles is yelling something from inside, his voice no longer cracking with the onset of puberty, and Alice suddenly realizes that she has grown up; they all have. She remembers when she used to have to stand on her tiptoes to get her chin even vaguely close to the roof of the Camaro, but now she looks down on it, watching the frost splay its way over the faded yellow surface. A snowflake drifts down into her eye and she blinks it out, her eyelashes crashing down with an imagined bang.

Charles' yelling is reaching an alarming volume, nearly rattling the windows, and Alice permits a smile to go up into her eyes as she shakes her head fondly and trudges up the front walk, knocking three times on the door. It is opened almost instantly by Charles' sister Benji, still affected and bookish but taller and less slouchy and a couple of years older. Alice tries to calculate Benji's age and is pretty sure that it's twenty-one, though her demeanor of youth had dissipated behind a rapidly developed aloofness that she'd adopted at the age of ten. Alice remembers Benji at the homecoming dance when the two had been fourteen and sixteen, respectively – standing by the bleachers with a plastic cup of punch, trying to seem apathetic but looking put-out when she thought no one was watching.

"Oh, hi, Alice," Benji says evenly, and Alice is certain she's thinking of the nights Charles would spend crying a little after he'd seen Joe and Alice at a movie together. "Have a good first semester?"

"Yeah," Alice lies; she can't remember a moment of it. "How about you? Ready to graduate yet?"

"Ugh," Benji huffs with a roll of her eyes. "I was ready three years ago. Anyway, come in."

Even though she doesn't say "I guess you can" before "come in," Alice can sense it lingering there.

"Thanks." Alice breezes by her, tediously unbuttoning her poncho and draping it on the coat hanger. She tugs her turtleneck further down and scratches at her tights before going out to stand in the living room and wait for Charles to notice her. There is a commotion from the kitchen – Charles is apparently indignant that his mother decided it would give the twins more space if he slept on the couch for Christmas break – and Mr. Kaznyk is bellowing that Jen is on the phone, calling from California, and wants to talk to Mrs. Kaznyk. Benji bustles by and takes the phone from him in the other room, her tone light and feigned as she greets her older sister.

Mr. Kaznyk emerges from the family room and smiles genuinely at Alice, asking her about her school year and how her exams went and what was new. She answers all of his questions pleasantly and in as much detail as she can, even though half of it she is making up or recycling from her old responses, but he seems satisfied, saying it is good to see her and that if she'll just wait a few more minutes, his meathead son would be in soon but oh, wait, all of his sons are meatheads! He means Charles specifically. They both laugh and he gives her an approving nod before going into the kitchen to quell the battle.

Alice feels small and scarce in the yawning emptiness of the living room, with its butter-yellow carpet and glittering Christmas tree. She is unused to the space, to the coziness. There is a small, fake tree from the local supermarket on the table beside the television in her house, barely noticeable among all the clutter and dimness. She knows she has no right to complain anymore, because before the autumn That Summer, the table had been exclusively meant to hold eight or so empty bottles at the end of each day.

"OH, MY, _GOD_!" a familiar voice explodes from behind her, and she jumps with an unintentional yelp of laughter, turning to see Charles, huskier than ever, staring slack-jawed at her from the entryway to the kitchen. She puts her hands out as though announcing a particularly exciting act on Broadway and says, "hey."

"Hey?" Charles exclaims, and he throws his arms out before coming to her in one stride and lifting her up in a hug, spinning her around until she is shrieking with laughter. "Is that all you can say to me after three months, Alice Jennifer Dainard? Shit! Merry Christmas!"

He sets her back down on the floor, and she is breathless with giggles. She can't bring herself to stop – it feels too good to laugh, like she is flying higher with each breath. She has _missed_ Charles – and she realizes in one fell swoop that she's _missed_ Cary and Preston and Martin _so much_; she's missed them so much she doesn't know how she ever made it without them. Three months has always been nothing more than a tiny crimp in what she likes to see as a long lifetime, but now, it feels like it has been equal to years.

She spends close to three hours at the Kaznyk house and even stays for dinner, earning a forced simper from Benji when she takes the last biscuit. She and Charles talk so long and so extensively that their throats grow raw, and for the first time in two years, there is no interruption by a passing thought of Joe; there is nothing to indicate that either of them has ever even known a Joe Lamb, nothing to indicate that they have ever been broken-hearted. There are no pauses, no lapse in smiles. When Alice finally climbs back into the Camaro and the sky is black with nighttime, she waves good-bye to Charles and Mr. and Mrs. Kaznyk and thinks that maybe there is something to be happy about. She remembers, then: Christmas is in eight days. And it is all the explanation she needs.

–

Louis Dainard has never been the sentimental type, and this is a quality that was passed on to his pallid, icy-eyed daughter. He has always prided himself on his ability to avoid nostalgia; when he drank, he drank for the present, not the past. Yet when there is a burst of cold air whipping into the entrance hall at 8:57 PM, and when he hears a suitcase hit the floor with an announcing crash, and when he picks himself up out of his chair and turns off the boxing match and sees his girl standing there, tall and elegant and smiling as he has not seen her smile since Joe Lamb asked her to the senior prom, he cannot help but be sentimental. He cannot help but think of her when she came up to his knee, when she would catch frogs and tell him that they were new friends for him. He cannot help but picture her throwing every bottle of beer in the house to the floor and screaming that she loves him (and he thinks, God, I've got to earn it). He cannot help but think of her, bursting with light amongst a crowd of otherwise gray peers, throwing her mortarboard into the June air and turning her head to look directly at him in the sea of parents on the bleachers and blow him a kiss.

"Ali," he says with a strained, beaming voice. She leaps into his arms and feels no heavier than she did when she was eight and he would carry her up to bed on Christmas Eve.

–

"Oh, damn it; I meant to tell you."

Alice looks up curiously from her cold leftover chow mein, the orange of the flames in the fireplace splashing in her snow-dampened hair. Louis looks vaguely annoyed with himself as his eyes return from their glance to the clock on the wall. It is 9:45 exactly.

"What?" she mumbles from her mouthful, wiping her chin with a napkin and swallowing.

"Jack called. Jack Lamb." She knows which Jack he meant. "Said he wanted to talk to you as soon as you got back. Better not be about anything illegal." He eyes her with jocular suspicion and she smirks. "You might still have time to catch him at home; I know he doesn't turn in 'til about ten-thirty nowadays." Jackson Lamb's bedtime has been growing later and later in the past two years. "Sounded like he was pretty set on it; would it be too much trouble for you to check in with him?"

"No," Alice replies truthfully, clambering up from her cross-legged position on the floor. "I'll be quick."

"No rush," Louis says, and Alice remembers a time when he wouldn't let her out of the house except for school. She forces herself to ignore these bitter reminders of the past, because that is a separate world, just as the one that once held Joe in it. She takes her beret and poncho from the hooks on the door and slips out into the night. Her breath clouds in opaque puffs as she waits for the car to heat up, rubbing her ungloved hands together. Finally, the puffs grow mildly limpid and she splutters off toward the Lamb house six blocks away. She'll never know how she ever managed to get this far on a bicycle.

The lights are still on when she pulls up, and she can hear Lucy barking when she goes up the front stairs. She rings the doorbell and shifts weight from one foot to the other, teeth gritted to keep from chattering. Moments pass, but then the door moves with a slow swing and Jackson Lamb is standing there looking at her with unsleeping eyes.

"Welcome back," he mutters cautiously. He is scrutinizing her as his eyes flick between hers. "Hope you had a good semester."

"I did, thanks," Alice replies, and they are tired words by now. "Sorry I came so late, but Dad said you wanted to ta—"

"Yeah, yeah," he interrupts, then paces himself. "I did. Come in. Sorry; shouldn't be makin' you stand out there in the cold."

"It's no problem," Alice says offhandedly, thanking him for holding the door open for her. She sighs and surveys the bits of the house she can see: unchanged. Less cluttered. Fewer stray pairs of size twelve shoes, fewer dirty plates left on tables. The only things missing are ones that she or Jackson Lamb would notice.

"Here. Come into the living room. You want anything? Coffee, or…?"

"No, thank you," Alice breathes absently, her heart swelling up toward the back of her throat as she drifts into the living room and takes a seat on the sagging couch. Jackson follows, sitting in the armchair opposite her, folding his hands in his lap.

"Well, there's not really much point in beating around the bush, I guess," he says, staring at the floor with tight lips. "I wanted to talk to you about Joe."

She says nothing. Her heart is up behind her tongue now, beating and gulping against her larynx.

"I wanted to say some things I probably should've said a long time ago. Guess I can't really make excuses; I just never thought they'd be important, but…" He inhales. Pauses. "I think it's time… that… well, that the unimportant things became… important. I mean, it's been two years since I heard from him, since either of us did, and I've… well, I'm a cop; I can't pretend I don't know what comes next."

"Mr. Lamb," Alice starts to say softly, but he raises a hand to silence her.

"No point, Alice. No point." Her shoulders sag. She wishes there was one – a point. She wishes there was a way to eradicate his somberness, to spirit away his guilt.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

"Listen," Jackson Lamb says, and he's leaning forward now, eyes boring into her in earnest. "That… my boy, he… Alice, don't you ever think he didn't care about you."

Alice nods after a moment, lowering her gaze, wanting to shrink back and go deaf. Her heart is scratching at her palate now.

"When," Jackson says, and he's no longer looking at her, "when you and he first started spendin' some time together, you know, when Chuck was makin' that monster movie of his in '79, we… well. I wasn't too happy about it, 'cause of your dad – but that's all in the past now, y'understand; I like your dad; he's a good man – but at the time it got us into a bit of a fight. Well, not a bit; a big one. For us. Guess I just wasn't used to havin' to raise him on my own, what with Elizabeth…"

Alice feels the overwhelming presence of his loss, then – when the steel girder had fallen on Elizabeth Lamb, it had been nearly enough; that was doubled when Joe left. Elizabeth had left a kiss good-bye; he used to keep the lipstick on his cheek and show it off at work. Joe, in his arrogance and selfishness and cowardice, had left a letter. A _typed_ letter. At the same time, she accepts that she will never be able to understand how he has survived it, how he has managed to plow on with little more than a tightened jaw. She can think of no words to say to him, but her mouth opens in sympathy when he mentions Elizabeth. She knows that he notices, but he makes no movement to reveal it.

"Anyway, I… I told him he couldn't see you anymore. Told him he was makin' the wrong choices, that he didn't know what he was talkin' about, that there were plenty of other girls out there better'n you. Again, all in the past."

She nods in understanding.

"But he said… I'll never forget what he said. He says, 'Just because Mom died doesn't mean you know anything about me. You don't. And you don't know about Alice, either.'"

Alice's chest, previously constricting with the absence of her swollen heart, now seems to fill with water, gurgling all the way up through the corners of her eyes. She makes no movement. She does not even blink.

"He says," Jackson Lamb continues after a breath, "'She's kind. She's _nice_ to me.'" He finally looks up at her again, and Alice can think of no other thing in existence that can speak as many words as his single gaze. "I wanna thank you for that. For bin' there for him when I wasn't, for lettin' him love you and for lovin' him back. Now I don't know what's been goin' through your head since he left and I don't really need to, Alice, but I just want you to understand that I'm damn grateful to you for everything you did for my boy, and that I've figured out that I'm not the only one left all broken up when he decided to go. And at best I wanted to apologize for bein' selfish and thinkin' I was."

His mouth flattens into a thin line, clearly holding back tears, and Alice doesn't break her gaze.

"I don't know if he's ever comin' back," he whispers with a hoarse, desperate choke. "He probably isn't and if he does I'm shootin' one of his nuts off, but… God. Alice, you are such a saint; you always were. So thank you for it, and if you ever need anything – _anything_ – call me. I'll always be here, swear to God; even when you're off in the world and he don't matter to ya anymore."

"He'll never stop mattering."

Alice blinks, startled – the voice she hears speak those words is hers, but she swears she never thought them, never opened her mouth to speak. Jackson Lamb's mouth grows longer and tighter, and his eyes squint and there are tears gathering in the edges of them, turning his eyelids red. He nods several times at her, never once looking away, and Alice doesn't care after a moment that the words can't have been hers, because she feels for the first time in her life as though she understands Joe's father and, even more, that he understands her.

In barely more than a murmur, she says, "Ever."

–

Christmas goes by quietly. There is snow drifting down on Christmas Eve, but not a single flake comes from the sky for the entirety of Christmas Day. Her father gives her a gold necklace with a tiny peridot at the end – her birthstone. She gives him a book and a new scarf, both of which she saved up for with money from her on-campus job as filer in the library. She receives a wide array of eclectic gifts from her friends – she can call them that now; Cary, Charles, Martin, and Preston – and gives some in return, and she permits herself to wonder what Joe is doing as she falls asleep on the couch in front of the fire and the twinkling artificial tree. It is Christmas, so she cannot be angry: she thinks of him with an inexplicable concern, a fondness – she wonders if he is lonely, and if he misses her. She wonders if he received or gave any presents, and she wonders if he will ever come back. She does not often wonder this, instead constantly telling herself that there is no point in wondering, because it is obvious that he is gone and does not care enough about anyone to come back (nor does he have the sheer audacity, the bastard).

She falls asleep, and Christmas comes to an end as the snow begins to fall again.

–

Joe's heater is broken. He is shivering under his blankets, dreams filled with snow angels and makeup sponges, blonde hair twirling like a skirt, double-jointed fingers on the small of his back. The night turns black and bleary (the cars are honking in droves) and he rolls over, and the dreams end like a roll of super 8 film, clicking and flickering into white on the projector screen before going dark and cold.


	5. The World Spins Madly On

**Oh boy, oh boy! Here it is, gang! Finally. Sorry this one took so long; I don't know what happened. I guess I had to really think about Joe's motives in leaving, and yes, folks, those are revealed in this chapter. I hope I did it in a way that won't make you hate him. D:  
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**This isn't my best, but it'll do. I'd like to especially thank theheffalump and Jonuda for beta-ing this chapter while it was in the works and telling me how it was doing, and their feedback was all positive, so I must be doing something right! And many thanks to my fantastic and lovely reviewers: GhibliGirl91, who inspired me to finish this; RageLikeRipred, siriuslycool48 (I love you so much for reviewing every chapter), I love the Pyro (I LOVE YOU, TOO), Super8Geek (AND YOU), and Super8-Lover (ALSO YOU). **

**The song to accompany this chapter is "The World Spins Madly On" by the Weepies (gorgeous song; look it up), though, alternatively, you can also listen to "Missing You" by John Waite, which was #1 on the charts in '84. Just FYI, here's the timeline of this fic, since some of you seem to be a bit confused: 1979 is when the alien invades; in my head canon, Joe and the gang are 14 and have just finished eighth grade. 1983 is when Joe leaves at age 17. 1985 is the year occurring in chapters two, three, and four; the gang is around 19. 1986 has just begun in this chapter – the New Year. At present, Joe and the gang are all around 20. **

**Hope that explains everything! And without further ado, enjoy!**

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><p><em>There's a heart that's breaking down this long distance line tonight. I ain't missing you at all since you've been gone away. I ain't missing you, no matter what I might say. <em>

— **John Waite, **_**Missing You**_** (1984)**

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><p><em>I woke up and wished that I was dead. With an aching in my head, I lay motionless in bed. I thought of you, and where you'd gone – let the world spin madly on.<em>

— **The Weepies, _World Spins Madly On _(2006)**

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><p>Alice has a New Year's resolution. It is to unconditionally and guiltlessly forget Joseph Arthur Lamb, to not allow a single tear to fall from her eyes in his name, to never allow herself to want him to come back.<p>

The morning of New Year's Day is buried under mountains of white, going all the way up to the handles on the Camaro doors. She starts in on the photographs first.

Scattered within albums she's had since the eighth grade are pictures of the two of them. Most of them involve him with one arm around her shoulders, grinning at the camera as she leans far forward with laughter; or of him staring dreamily at her while his lips push against her flushed cheek; or of her behind him with her arms crossed below his neck, and in all of them they are smiling and beaming, never once imagining that they would face abandonment and hatred, because they have conquered everything; they have conquered an alien and the military and they never stopped holding hands as their world ebbed back to its illusion of normalcy.

She will never stop questioning his choices, she thinks to herself as she dumps the albums and frames in a cardboard box marked **ATTIC**. It had always been Joe who had reminded her to never blame herself when people left her behind, but now that he has left her, too, she doesn't know who she is supposed to believe anymore.

There had been a time when she would have traveled to the ends of the universe if it meant getting his mother's locket back for him. Now she entertains the same thoughts about Joe that she did about the locket – that he is floating somewhere in space, frozen and forgotten, fingertips blue with stardust and freedom, eyes wide open, gazing carelessly into infinity.

–

Joe doesn't know what makes him oversleep on Wednesday morning. It is a feeling, a desperate need for dreaming, a sudden inability to wake up and _pretend_ for another twenty-four grueling hours. What he does know is that his head is splitting with pain and that he can barely keep his eyes open, and that today will be The Day. He doesn't know what exactly will happen, nor what sort of day it is – only that it is The Day.

He stumbles into the antique store (Greer & Sons Antiques – Joe finds it ironic that there are no sons who stayed behind to help run the store) an hour and a half late, the door to the back entrance banging violently behind him as he tears his coat and scarf off, tossing them onto a nearby armchair (circa 1907). His boss, Mr. Greer, who is stooped over behind the cumbersome cash register and counter, turns around and shoots him an appraising look, his eyes round behind his coke bottle glasses. His bald head glistens in the dusty morning light, and the tip of his his scraggly white goatee is curlier than usual. He resumes his task – attempting to get the temperamental register to open – and Joe wordlessly heads toward the cabinet in the back that holds the silverware polish. Buffering the bulk of the silver collections is his first task every day.

"Never thought you'd be the type to come in late there, Joey," Mr. Greer says slyly from the counter. Joe can hear clicking from the register and muttered expletives from Mr. Greer.

"I'm really sorry," Joe voices with a heavily apologetic tone, heading for the silver section with a can of polish and some rags. "I overslept."

"What was keepin' you up?" Mr. Greer inquires offhandedly, and Joe can hear a smirk through his feigned disinterest.

"Nobody," Joe replies too quickly, then attempts to fix his mistake: "Nothing."

He stops in his tracks and stares at the wall, and considers telling the truth. It feels like an honest morning, a morning for discussing skeletons. He turns to Mr. Greer after a beat, his face deepened by a frown.

"Alice." He never says her name, except to himself when he's awake at three in the morning and listening to the rain clattering onto the fire escape.

Mr. Greer stops what he is doing instantly at the sound of the name and sits back on the revolving bar stool (circa 1892), resting an elbow on the counter. Joe knows it's an invitation for him to continue, but he doesn't know what else to say. What words could conceivably follow Alice's name? What sentences would have the gall to try to upstage her?

"Alice, huh?" Mr. Greer repeats evenly, his eyes giving away no trace of confusion. Joe told him about Alice once before, on the second anniversary of his flight from Lillian. "Thought you said you were gonna forget about her."

Joe laughs a little to himself, an empty, humorless sound. "Never."

"That's what I figured," Mr. Greer mutters with a sigh, shifting on the stool. The bones in his back snap and crack with indignance at the movement. "How long's it been now since you left home, anyway?"

"Two years and six months," Joe answers automatically, and it's exact to the date: it is February 27th as New York reclines on its bed of snow.

"Christ, kid." Mr. Greer shakes his head in disbelief and a little bit of disappointment.

Joe nods wordlessly, his mind still lingering on blacktops, on Carol's Diner, on blonde braids slicing through the summer air with the fireflies.

Mr. Greer's lips tighten and he bows his head in thought, and after a moment's silence he looks back up at Joe again, who hasn't moved, the polish still in his arms.

"You said you loved her the last time you told me about her," the old man murmurs, his tone cautious. "That still true?"

Joe makes no response, eyes focused on a point below Mr. Greer's feet. Mr. Greer shakes his head solemnly before staring accusatorially at his employee, who inhales deeply as though for strength.

"Maybe," Joe sighs.

"Maybe? Then why in the name of all that is holy did you leave her?" Mr. Greer demands, his tone sharp but not cruel. "Do you even know what love _is_, Joey? You can't possibly, not if you leave a woman like that behind! I've seen the way you get when you think about her; hell, you think about her all the damn time; I can see it in your eyes!"

Mr. Greer has heard the whole story of Joe's departure. It is old news to him.

"More importantly," he continues undaunted, "why didn't you at least say good-bye? Couldn't you have given her that much?"

Joe's eyelids are low over his irises, his eyebrows upturned with melancholy.

"I guess," he whispers back slowly, "I guess I knew… I guess I knew if I saw her I would… I would stay. I couldn't go anywhere if I looked her in the eye. It was my last chance." There are tears edging into his voice now. "It was my last chance to…" He shakes his head, and whatever was left of the sentence dissipates into the musty smell of the artifacts around him in their stacks and droves.

"Oh, God save me from the young," Mr. Greer cried to the ceiling. "God save me from the young and their waste of their youth!"

Joe would ordinarily have quirked a smile at his boss's histrionics, but today his face feels heavy and still. He gingerly lowers himself onto a rococo-looking loveseat, arms still wrapped around the haphazard bundle of cloths and bottles of polish.

"You should've known right then and there, Joey," Mr. Greer says melancholically, removing his glasses to look at Joe with pity. "If there was _anything_ to make you stay, even if it was just that one girl, then you should've _known_ not to leave. You only leave if you've got nothing to miss. You don't throw everything away just because you're a coward." Joe winces. He has told himself since the day he left that he is not a coward, but every moment away from Lillian makes him doubt it just a little more. "You don't leave everybody banged up in your wake unless they never did right by you, and you don't sit around _missing_ them unless you were never meant to leave them in the first place. This girl, this Alice – if you love her so much, why didn't you stay? Why did you run away if you love her so goddamn much? Why'd you leave your dad if you were the only thing he had left? Why'd you leave your friends if they were brave enough to stick by you through everything? Jesus, Joey, I like to think I've never in my life hired an idiot, but you might be the first."

Joe withers under his boss's tirade, the cloths in his arms spilling down onto the floor. Goosebumps are racing up and down his arms and shoulders even though it's despicably hot in the shop thanks to the malfunctioning heater.

"Go _back_, Joe. What the hell are you doing here? You don't belong here; you never did. God knows why you came here – He's the only poor bastard who does, probably, because I'll bet anything _you_ don't know why you did! – but you can't stay. You could stay if there was nobody left in that little town who cared about you; you could stay if somebody there made you bleed. But nobody did. You made _them_ bleed. If you don't get out of this store and onto the highway by the end of the day, I swear to God I'm firing you and no friend of mine in this city'll hire you, and believe me, I've got a lot of 'em."

"It's fine," Joe murmurs, not even blinking. "I probably won't be coming back here again anyway."

"That so?" Mr. Greer sniffed, trying to conceal the tinge of hopefulness in his voice.

"I don't know." Joe finally sets the polish and rags on the floor before putting his head in his hands, staring down at the scuffed floor. "I want to go back. I really do."

"So go," Mr. Greer grunts as though it is painfully obvious, picking something out of his teeth before regarding it apathetically and flicking it away.

"It's not that easy."

"Hah! Oh, Christ. 'Not that easy.' Life isn't a _soap opera_, Joey; either you go back or you don't."

"I know; I know! God!" Joe huffs, the first sign of frustration he's shown in weeks. "I _wish_ it was that easy."

He pauses, and impulsively closes his eyes, and Mr. Greer cannot help thinking that Joe is suddenly imagining the room lit up and filled with the laughter of people he knew in a time far gone.

"I think about her so much," he admits, his voice soft with sorrow, his eyebrows cracking over his forehead forlornly. "More than anybody else. Does that make me a horrible person? I mean," his eyes are open again, "sometimes I wonder if she hates me."

"Probably," Mr. Greer replies bluntly.

Joe nods. "And yeah, see; that's why I can't go back now. Once you leave you can't take anything back, really, you know?"

"Joseph," Mr. Greer says with firmness that makes Joe straighten instinctively. "Before you get started on worrying about what'll go down if you go back, you need to figure out what made you leave in the first place."

At this, Joe's mind sinks into grayness – into wordless, pointless monochrome. He can think of no answer. Every time he tries, his introspection comes up a frivolity. There are only black corners of loneliness, and of confusion, and even _he_ has a hard time explaining what made him run away, despite countless nights of scrutinizing and contemplation.

"I was scared, I guess," he hears a voice say, a voice that sounds disturbingly like his own but that he's certain didn't come out of _his_ mouth, even though he can feel his lips moving. "Something… something happened back home, in Lillian, when I was like fourteen… I can't… _really_ tell you what it was, exactly, because of—well, uh… anyway… this _thing_ that happened, it…" His sentences are fraught with pauses, and he keeps sighing in exasperation before trying new approaches. "People started forgetting about it after a while. They moved on. Alice and Ch-Charles and Cary and Martin and Preston and D… and Dad. I was the only one who wasn't really growing out of it; I was just standing there like, 'what are you doing? That happened to _us_. To all of us. We were in it _together_. We still are.' But then life happened or whatever, or _something_, and they just left it behind; it wasn't really real anymore. And when that thing happened, it was the only thing I was ever good for – it was the only thing I really _did_, the thing that made me _exist_; it made me real. And when that thing stopped being real, it was like I stopped being real, too.

"My mom used to look at me the way nobody else did, like I was something really special and just… and just _there_. Alice did, too. And after that thing happened, a lot of people started looking at me like that, but then the thing got old and people forgot and then they forgot about me, too. And I just knew it then, you know? I knew I didn't really belong anymore. When they moved on from that thing, they moved on from me, too. And I was scared. I didn't want to stop being real; I was too used to it; I was getting to like it when people knew I was there. I wasn't Quiet Joe Lamb, the Deputy's Kid; I was just—I was Joe. I was me. Do you…"

He swallows, and finally he looks up at Mr. Greer right in the eyes. "Do you get what I'm saying?"

Mr. Greer nods slowly, taking it all in, twirling the end of his goatee in thought.

"Yeah, Joe. I think I do." Joe loosens with relief at his words, letting out a long, exhausted exhale. "My advice still stands, though." He puts his glasses back on and turns to the cash register frankly, sniffing with nonchalance. "Go the hell home."

This isn't exactly what Joe wants to hear at this particular moment. He lets out a low growl of self-loathing and puts his head in his hands, pushing his palms against his eyes until he sees green-and-purple spots. He wants to cry. He wants to cry so badly. He hasn't cried once since he first moved into the apartment.

"At the apartment," he says with gritted teeth, his fingers fisted into his helter-skelter hair, "I'm not really anybody, but it's different. They don't ask me any questions. They just kind of acknowledge that I'm there and I can do what I like. I don't have to worry about… losing anybody, or losing myself, or whatever. God." He looks up, eyes focusing eerily on a point directly across from him, eyebrows low. "I'm a coward."

"We're all cowards at heart, Joey," Mr. Greer's voice is tired and rife with experiences, and Joe feels a flash of pity for his boss – an old man with no sons and a departed wife and an antique store that sells nothing.

"If I left, would you miss me?" It's a stupid question, a childish one, and Joe feels foolish for asking it, for being so selfish as to assume that _anyone_ would miss him. He was so far from significant in Lillian that he had always assumed people would be able to adjust to not having him around. He would not create any large gaps, or cause any semblance of heartbreak. It is this presumption, he thinks sometimes, that could have also attributed to his departure from home: that he would not, when all was said and done, be _missed_. Alice was far too lovely, too tenacious, to have any trouble operating without him beside her. Charles was going far, and would go farther without Joe there to drag him down with his stupid talk of make-up and sound effects. Preston and Martin were both clever and closer to each other than anyone else, and Cary had his fireworks, and his smile, and his charisma, and his father couldn't miss anything to save his life, much less show it.

Mr. Greer looks to the ceiling, letting out a long, pensive sigh. There is a moth fluttering around the chandelier (circa 1929) and cobwebs billowing wistfully.

"Not as much as everyone in that tiny little town is missing you right now, I'd wager," he finally says after a long silence, turning to give Joe a more meaningful look than he has ever received, even from his stern-eyed father. Joe swallows.

"Okay," he whispers, and suddenly he's standing and running toward the back door, grabbing his scarf and coat in one swipe and wrenching the door handle as a burst of cold air explodes into the store. "Okay, Mr. Greer. Thank you. Thanks. I'll—" He freezes, coat and scarf still in hand, and turns his head to gaze at his boss, who is smiling warmly at him, eyes glistening. "I'll be back. I'll visit you. I swear. I'll write you, and… I will."

He sprints out into the snow then, hair flying back over his forehead, eyes squinting against the wind.

"Shut the damn door, you whippersnapper!" he hears Mr. Greer grumble, but he pays him no mind, running to the subway station, running to the apartment building, running up the stairs, his heart pumping and fluttering as he tries to ignore the clutching presence of foreboding in his chest.

"I can't be afraid anymore," he murmurs to himself as he stuffs things into his ratty suitcase.

–

Something touches Alice's heart – something colder and more desperate than the tiny blizzard swelling outside.

"Everything okay?" Cary asks, the first to notice while the other chatter over coffee and cookies in Charles' living room.

"I'm not sure," Alice replies breathlessly, voice hushed.

"Is your Joe sense tingling?" Preston jibes, smirking. The boys shake their heads in exasperation.

"Let's hope not," Alice hisses as she gets to her feet. "Who wants more Oreos?"

Four hands shoot up in unison, and Alice rolls her eyes fondly before going into the kitchen, trying to ignore her shivers.


	6. Copperline Preview

**Ugh, I'm sorry this is taking so long, you guys. I promise I'm working on the new chapter. There've been delays – I had a paper due today that I didn't know about! Quaint. **

**It's _almost_ done. While I'm here, I figured I'd give you all a preview. :)**

* * *

><p>Joe stands reticently at the doorstep of his father's house, fingers hanging loose and frigid at his sides, barely brushing against the surface of his jeans. He exhales with a shudder, blinking the snow out of his eyes. The adamant scarlet of the sunrise fades into quivering white and yellow and gray, and Joe hardly remembers how it feels to be unafraid.<p>

He stands, unmoving, hardly breathing. His throat constricts viciously, dry and swollen. Inexplicably, indolently, he thinks of the day his mother died, of how he had come home to an empty house, but that when his father had arrived, he had swept him up and hugged him so desperately that he had lifted him completely off the ground, even though he was thirteen. Joe had hugged him back and cried, and that was the only time he had _really_ cried about his mother – about _anything_ – and he had expected that when morning would come, he would find himself in another lonesome embrace, but had been met only with tortured stares, aside glances, forcibly apathetic sighs, questioning hazel eyes, thin mouths.

He wonders if Lucy is still alive. Oddly, it is this question that causes him to raise a hand and knock, softly, on the surface of the door. From inside, he hears muffled barking, old and tired. His breath hitches. _He still has time to run away; he still has time to—_

"I'm warnin' you, if it's you goddamn Jehovah's Witnesses again I'm gonna get my twenty gauge and I'm gonna—"

It only then occurs to Joe exactly how long it has been since he's seen his father's eyes, much less looking straight at him. Jackson Lamb seems older somehow, but not in wrinkles of the face or graying of the hair – in the wind-worn, wizened quality of his stare, of the lines moving around the sorrowful tilt of his mouth. He opens the door with a grumpy swing, not actually looking at the occupant of the doorstep until the end of his sentence. Joe _stands_, as he has been for twenty minutes – he stands, and looks his father in the eye, and feels no dread. Above all things, he feels a sick sense of guilty happiness (or happy guiltiness).

"Oh, my God," his father says, voice low and quiet like a thunderstorm. Joe swallows. His eyes feel moist; they sting. He doesn't know what to say. It seems stupid. It seems insignificant. "Joe."

"I..." Joe croaks, and as soon as that comes out, he knows he has to finish that sentence. Thousands of possibilities run through his head:_ I'm sorry – I missed you – I don't know what to tell you_... but something entirely different comes out of his mouth.

"Dad, I... I've... been an idiot. And an asshole."

Jackson Lamb has no visible response at first, but Joe notices something horrifying: there are tears snaking down his cheeks, dripping onto his forearms as he holds the door open in catatonia. But then, slowly, he begins to nod – once, twice, thrice, and then it is rhythmic; up and down, up and down, and the tears are not stopping now. Joe feels some on _his_ face, of all places, but perhaps that's the snow. His father raises a fist to his mouth, letting out a wheeze, and Joe fears for a split second that he is perhaps having a heart attack, but the worry passes.

"Yeah," his father says after a time, voice ragged, and he grits his teeth in an attempt to stop the tears. "Yeah, son, damn right you have."

_Son_.

Joe's heart feels as though it has just burst.


End file.
